


Apologies to chance

by Maria_Antonina



Series: Under One Small Star [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Destroy Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-24
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-06 08:53:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/733828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maria_Antonina/pseuds/Maria_Antonina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two years later, London was still mostly rubble and they had yet to see clear skies. Still, things were looking up. The Galaxy was being rebuilt. If only Kaidan could share the optimism.</p><p>Now beta'd by the fantastic mythicbeast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apologies to chance

_My apologies to chance for calling it necessity._

_My apologies to necessity if I’m mistaken, after all._

-Wislawa Szymborska, _Under One Small Star_

 

 

 

*

 

Shepard took up smoking within weeks of being able to breathe again. He still couldn’t use the bathroom on his own, and the doctors weren’t all that sure about his back, but every time Kaidan got permission to visit there was either a suspicious scent lingering in the air or, abandoning all pretense, a cigarette dangling from Shepard’s still-bruised mouth.

 

Kaidan found the whole thing a little silly, to say the least.

 

“Who even gave them to you? You’d think the doctors would be against it,” he said the first time he caught it, wondering how fire safety regulations applied to somebody who’d survived a space station exploding.

 

“Seriously, John,” he said, a couple of visits later, brows furrowing as he stared at the back of his commander’s head. “It can’t be good for you. You know I don’t mind, normally, but your lungs are only barely cooperating there.”

 

“John?”

 

“Can you at least put it out when I’m around? You do that with the doctors.”

 

“That’s a no, isn’t it.”

 

“I should just take them away. Hunt down whoever supplies you and make them stop. Next thing I know, you’ll be snorting red sand off your pillow!”

 

That was supposed to be a joke, but it didn’t sound very funny when it hit the wall of silence that surrounded Shepard these days. Kaidan sighed and leaned back in his plastic chair, going through his paperwork and commenting out loud to keep up the attempt at conversation.

 

Even if John never looked at him anymore.

 

 

*

 

“At least it’s nothing personal,” Vega didn’t sound half as confident as he probably thought he did. “He ignores everybody. I heard Scars put a gun to his head and all the guy did was- you know.”

 

The younger man shrugged, then turned around and went back to his digging. Kaidan didn’t have to ask: the blank look James couldn’t find the words to talk about was all too familiar to him. The memory of it made him shudder involuntarily. He’d known Shepard for more than five years now, and it was still hard to find the man behind the glass barrier of that soulless stare.

 

Clean-up duty was something Kaidan indulged in from time to time. The worst of the rubble in London had been cleared by now, but James never complained when the newly-appointed general came over to lift some of the bigger rocks with his biotics. It helped Kaidan clear his head, get sufficiently tired to be actually hungry and maybe - _maybe_ \- even able to sleep, if he went at it for long enough.

 

“Heard anything from Sparks yet?”

 

“She says the flotilla’s reached the Pelion relay,” Kaidan still felt uneasy at sharing such confidential information, but James had- done his share. Besides, it was just the two of them in an empty street, the rest of the team tasked with clearing out the inside of a nearby shop. Alliance regs weren’t good for much when it came to anyone who’d been part of the Normandy’s crew. “It looks a lot easier to fix than the Charon and Three-fourteen. She hopes to see the Far Rim by Christmas.”

 

James grunted something to confirm that he’d heard, but didn’t say anything else. Neither he nor Kaidan would see their respective homes by Christmas, and _they_ were on the right planet.

 

Kaidan couldn’t leave. There weren’t all that many officers of his status - or Spectres, even - left, and London was still the centre of all Alliance administration, but duty was only a part of the reason he stayed. Shepard hadn’t expressed any hint of willing to be moved somewhere else. Luckily, the facilities in Whitechapel were good enough to handle his recovery, and a team of salarian medics had decided to stay on Earth specifically to take care of him.

 

He didn’t have to worry about his family. The last he’d heard of his mother, she was reported to be safe and sound in Vancouver. So, with nothing else compelling him elsewhere… he might as well stay.

 

As for James? He probably had his reasons. He had volunteered for this digging post and hadn’t left for over a year. Kaidan wasn’t one to ask any questions.

 

Steve’s remains hadn’t been found yet.

 

 

 

*

 

“It’s hard enough to make him sit up, sir,” the salarian doctor said, the brisk tone implying that he didn’t have time to listen to Kaidan’s petty complaints. “I’ll be damned if I take away the one thing he seems to be interested in, even _if_ that thing does nothing but pump poisonous fumes directly into his system.”

 

Kaidan stopped arguing, but couldn’t stop thinking grudgingly that, had doctor Chakwas still been alive, she wouldn’t let it go on.

 

 

 

*

 

“I’ve seen them like that, you know.”

 

There was only one club working in London, with its horrible, banging music and every single illegal substance in this post-apocalyptic nightmare available in the corners. The Normandy crew had their drinks for free.

 

“I bet you have.”

 

Kaidan had trouble dealing with Jack. She was a decent drinking buddy and one of the only people left he could bear talking to, but dear _God_ if he didn’t hate her guts sometimes. She sounded all too much and all too little like John in one of his moods, she always knew better and grew crude if anyone implied she didn’t. It usually took him two alcohol induced hours before he was able to ask for her advice, let alone listen to it.

 

“Don’t be a bitch, y’know what I mean. He’s not there anymore.”

 

“Don’t-”

 

“He’s not coming back, tight-pants.” She cut him off, voice harsh and distant. “Learn to live with it.”

 

For some reason, people kept trying to have this discussion with Kaidan. Apparently, ‘learning to live with it’ included abandoning his daily hospital visits. He downed his shot of an unidentified substance and wished he had other friends.

 

 

 

*

 

It was now seven years since the battle for Earth.

 

The quarian fleet reported that most of the major mass relays were still active, then proceeded to figuratively flip the rest of the galaxy off and took to the settling down on the home planet business. It was early April, and Tali told him Rannoch was beautiful.

 

In June, Primarch Victus has personally notified Admiral Hackett - and, by extension, General Alenko - that his most prized advisor Garrus Vakarian has disappeared from the family house just outside Cipritine. After failing to get in contact with him for a month, he was now officially considered missing. Kaidan didn’t worry. Garrus hadn’t been handling the new reality well and whatever happened to him, he probably felt much better now that he wasn’t in the middle of it.

 

It was a rather horrible thing to think, to assume that death was kinder for a friend than living in the time of peace for a soldier. To squash this feeling, he contacted Liara and asked her to keep an eye out for the turian. She didn’t reply, but she never did. She never had, not for the last three years - her job became a lot more time consuming seemingly overnight. He was sure she still read his messages, though.

 

No more news of Garrus reached him until September, when the Citadel was officially declared habitable again. After that, he was too busy mediating between the krogan and the Alliance. Urdnot Bakara was asking for answers, now that the world wasn’t burning anymore.

 

The galaxy as a collective looked at Earth, closed in on London and peered through the big window in the Whitechapel Recovery Wing, where a salarian neurosurgery expert was currently having a mental breakdown and the famed Commander Shepard practiced walking slowly around the room. His knees weren’t healing quite right, but nobody cared anyway, since his brain worked just fine and he still refused to acknowledge anything that was requested of him.

 

“It’s okay,” Kaidan told him quietly, after returning from Sur’Kesh. Dalatrass Linron had very helpfully provided the complete research file on Mordin’s work; it was, apparently, doomed from the start. “You just rest. They can’t drag you into any of their conflicts anymore, John. I won’t let them.”

 

The electronic cigarette, a recent upgrade, had been turned off and dutifully put in its special place on the bedside table. Shepard looked at him, hearing words and very clearly not caring a huge lot about them. He was handsome again, the tumors and scars gone, his nose and left jawbone good as new.

 

Jack told him nearly every time they met that he was the only person who still saw anything behind those blank blue eyes, but Kaidan swore John recognised him. Heard him, even, if not listened. Commander Shepard was alive, he just- needed time to get back to the actual living part. God knows he deserved as much of it as he desired.

 

It was late into October when Admiral Hackett let himself into Kaidan’s office and, without saying a word, played on his omni-tool the suicide note of a salarian neurosurgery expert who confessed to letting Commander Shepard die.

  
Kaidan couldn’t muster enough emotion to appear surprised.

**Author's Note:**

> Now grammatically correct and making sense, thanks to mythicbeast beta-ing the guts out of it. All that for your reading pleasure. Go check her out.


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